SA Innovation Summit extends Ayo Scaling Africa Investment deadline

Jeni Kostova – executive: narketing and communications, Ayo | image supplied

Entrants simply complete an entry form on the SA Innovation website. The panel will select the top five entries who will then go to battle in a live Demo Day on 28 July 2021.

The SA Innovation Summit and Ayo Technology Solutions have described the competition as a funding-securement challenge to further escalate the continent’s adoption of 4IR.

Jeni Kostova, marketing and communications executive at Ayo, says: “The technology space is a hotly competitive landscape, even more so than ever before, given the speed of innovation that is required to bridge the chasm wrought by the seismic shift to digital in 2020. In this competition, we will award a cash prize to the winner of the pitch, but Ayo is also looking to fund Series A companies, who have successfully concluded their proof of concept addressing a particular problem, have demonstrated some form of traction and who require the development capital to them to the next stage.”

SA Innovations Summit’s founder and chairman, Dr Audrey Verhaeghe, observed: Scaling is an entrepreneurial word we don’t spend enough time on, it is vastly different to growth. When you scale, you scale exponentially beyond your current markets even beyond borders, whereas growth is more organic. We, therefore, want to see more innovative companies enter this competition, who are geared to scale without their costs growing as much.”

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Verhaeghe notes that the tech sector is filled with competitions, but as she notes, many of them can be superficial and mostly for image purposes. She notes that the difference with the Ayo Scaling Africa Series is: “This is one competition that goes beyond the prize money to include not only the potential for real investment funding but also the investment into skills, experience and new markets that the investor can offer the winner.”

In terms of pitching and submission tips, Kostova and Verhaeghe encourage would-be entrants to understand that the competition is in two parts – one for the cash prized and the other for potential investment. As such, they require different approaches.

However, the investment portion works very differently, is there a real problem that is being solved, in a unique and easily scalable way? Is there a real viable market? “We also need to know this business can deliver, what’s your traction, and we need to see the proof that the market already responds to what you do. In short, convince us that the money we put into your company will make more,” said Kostova.